It is indeed in 1971 that the engineer Ray (mond) Tomlinson sent the first e-mail and it is also he who proposed to ‘use the @ as a separator between the person’s name and what was then the machine name. The very first address was “ tomlinson @ bbn-tenexa “.
Ray Tomlinson, deceased in March 2016 had time to see his invention gain importance. Even today, email is indeed a privileged channel for exchanges and, even if some want to “reinvent” it, it remains essential. On the other hand, it is largely “polluted” by spam of all kinds.
On the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary which took place at the end of October, the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG) published a blog post. We learn that Ray “ sent the first email ” between two computers located 3m from each other.
Ray Tomlinson thought his first email should contain “ something like QWERTYUIOP “, ie the first line of the keyboard in its American version. The M3AAWG states that, “ in 1976, the Queen of England became the first Head of State to use email ”.
- Ray Tomlinson, the father of email, died at 74 years
